'Better way' to build diving wreck off Portland (From Dorset Echo)

'Better way' to build diving wreck off Portland

11:40am Saturday 7th February 2009

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AN INVENTOR reckons there’s a better way to create a diving attraction off Portland – make it out of concrete.

Joseph Toland has been involved in a project further down the coast to create an artificial wreck from recycled materials including concrete.

The ‘wreck’ is not only environmentally-friendly but also a lot safer for divers and made to withstand corrosion from the sea so would outlast metal ships.

Interest in the SS Nautilus project has come from around the globe.

Mr Toland spoke in light of proposals to create a sanctuary of artificial reefs off Portland involving sinking decommissioned warships.

The Portland-based Wreck to Reef group says it will breathe new life into the ailing diving industry while also helping to support the angling and fishing trades and to promote nature and education.

Mr Toland is director of Plymouth-based Rubicon Marine Products, the ideas arm of the A&P shipyard group.

His firm has been involved in designing tidal energy structures and came up with the wreck idea after the sinking of HMS Scylla off Plymouth in 2004.

Although popular, Mr Toland says Scylla is already breaking up and there are concerns about visibility due to plankton and dredge material drifting into the area.

Falmouth’s diving community threw its weight behind the plan and helped to design the structure, although the project has now been put on hold.

Mr Toland estimates it would cost £4.5million in total. It would avoid the high costs associated with environmentally cleaning a ship.

Mr Toland said: “One of the many advantages of this project is that it could bear an individual or corporate name in return for sponsorship.

“We also have plans to fit the ship with an underwater camera that could be linked to a visitor centre.”

Mr Toland is currently talking to officials in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, about sinking a structure there and has made initial contact with Wreck to Reef.

The group’s project co-ordinator Neville Copperthwaite said: “We’re open to ideas; they’ll all go in the melting pot.

“We’d like our first reef to be a warship but it’s possible a concrete structure could work for our nature and education reef.”

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